I was a lusty kid who loved Tennessee Williams.
I’ve been watching a lot of Joan Didion interviews on YouTube. I love her. My drummer has gotten me into looking at Terence McKenna interviews.
Fervor is a fire that makes things boil and grow hot, just as fire causes water to boil. It is, properly speaking, charity on fire, and that is what you should have because a Daughter without Charity is like a body without a soul.
I guess trying to throw my body into the guitar is so natural for me that I don’t even know how to explain it. I can’t imagine life without it.
Generally my day-to-day is pretty much the same. Just busy and working and on tour. And trying to put on the best show possible every night.
Fashion, for me, is anything that’s aesthetic and beautiful. Art, food, film. It’s something that I appreciate and really like.
All you can do is make something that you like and feel proud of and then just hope for the best and try to get out of its way.
I think human beings have a really broad spectrum of traits, and I almost feel implicated when we say, ‘Men are like this, women are like this.’ Nobody was telling me, ‘Don’t get dirty, don’t play in the mud, girls don’t do that.’
In regards to being a fashion aficionado, there’s a certain amount of taking yourself seriously in the professional world. The self-effacing person can’t completely go down the serious road. But I design, and love when things are beautiful.
I started playing guitar when I was 12 and probably from that age knew that I wanted to make music and make my own music. Playing with other bands like the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens was more like an apprenticeship for me than anything.
Musically, I have more things in common with tons of bands that have no female members.
A song has a life of its own. It’s an autonomous thing, separate from your own experience, almost. And the mere repetition of it means it’s subject to change; it means approaching it differently, expressing different emotional aspects of it. It doesn’t feel like wallowing.
I think a lot of people who want to be musicians terrify their parents because they don’t have a living example of it in their families, and I did. So I always knew that it was possible.
I wrote ‘Actor’ all on the computer. I didn’t touch any instruments until I was in the studio. So while I had all these ornate arrangements, I didn’t have any songs.
I remember looking at the sky and thinking that the universe is so big and it’s all chaos. I call it ‘the dark fear.’ At any moment, the dark fear could come in.
My dad used to love Steely Dan, the Stones, Jethro Tull and all that. There was always Steely Dan going in my dad’s car, but I remember The Royal Scam in particular because it has ‘Kid Charlemagne’ on it.
I love Robert Fripp. You know what I really appreciate about Robert Fripp? He always dresses appropriately for the occasion. When he’s on stage, he’s a Dapper Dan.
I grew up around a lot of various religions, so it’s a part of my consciousness in a way. Everything from heavy Catholicism to followers of Indian spiritual masters to Unitarian universalists – all in one family. Though the family aspect was stronger than any particular dogma.
To be honest, because there’s loud music in my ears probably three hours a day, between sound check and the show, I listen to podcasts more than I listen to music on the road.
And if I’m honest about it, I was obsessed with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. This is like ’92, right in the throes of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Nirvana. I think I probably wanted to be Kurt Cobain.